Читать книгу Seducing The Enemy - Emma Darcy, Emma Darcy - Страница 10

CHAPTER FOUR

ANNABEL sipped the pina colada, enjoying the sweet creaminess of the tropical cocktail and the energy lift it gave her. She needed to be sparking on all cylinders in Daniel Wolfe’s company. Nevertheless, her primary aim was to appear relaxed and completely unruffled by the situation.

She had deliberately requested a table on the wooden deck by the pool. The atmosphere was more intimate but she preferred to be distanced from the busy comings and goings inside the Long House, where the main dining room catered for a large crowd of guests. The light out here was dimmer, provided only by small table lamps. Her need for a sense of privacy overrode any sense of intimacy Daniel Wolfe might draw from her choice.

With the business of studying menus and making their meal selections over and the waiters gone elsewhere, Annabel let her gaze drift idly around the exotic plants that provided a lush setting for the artistically curved swimming pool. This was Daniel Wolfe’s party. It was up to him to set the conversational ball rolling. In projecting the air of pleasing herself, she denied any anxiety or apprehension over his intrusion on the scene.

Silence didn’t worry her. The longer it went on the better, as far as she was concerned. She knew he was scrutinising her, trying to burrow under her skin, but that didn’t worry her, either. He could study her as much as he liked. With her face in shadow and turned away from him, he wouldn’t see much.

“You remind me very strongly of the young Katharine Hepburn,” he said bemusedly.

Other people had made the same comment. Annabel supposed she should be flattered by it, since she was not as fine-featured nor as beautiful as the famous actress. It was the wavy red hair, green eyes, high cheekbones and wide mouth that made the comparison inevitable. Secretly she wished simply to be herself. Sometimes, although she deeply loved her sister, being a twin made her feel she wouldn’t ever be a whole person in her own right.

She slowly slanted a sardonic smile at Daniel Wolfe. “Do you have the same aim as Spencer Tracy when he first met Katharine Hepburn?”

“What was it?”

“I believe she made a comment about him being too short for her. He reportedly replied he would soon cut her down to size.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “It doesn’t apply.”

“Because you’re tall?”

“No. I wouldn’t like to see you diminished in any way.”

Her eyes mocked him. “What do you think you’ve been doing?”

It gave him pause for thought.

“Come, Mr. Wolfe. A man with a passion for truth should realise what he’s saying and how it will impact on the other person.”

“In what way have I offended you?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Diminished, not offended. Let’s be precise. In matters of truth, one must be precise.”

She enjoyed tossing his purpose in his face, making him examine his attitudes and behaviour before setting himself up as a judge. Besides, there were always so many interpretations of truth. It was often a highly personal thing. Even facts and figures could be twisted to suit someone’s preferred vision. Precision was not easily achieved.

He relaxed and smiled, and she thought he was enjoying the mental tussle she was provoking. “Tell me my crime,” he encouraged.

He really was extremely attractive when his expression lightened. For one wayward moment, Annabel imagined waking up in the morning with his smiling face on the pillow beside her. It had a strong appeal.

“Let’s try this scenario,” she invited, leaning forward to engage his concentration. “You take a woman you fancy to bed. There you are, all fired up with desire, and she says you’re the spitting image of your brother. Then she says you remind her strongly of Met Gibson, except your eyes are grey instead of blue. Are you still feeling good about having this woman beside you?”

“No. She’s not focused on the person I am.”

She grinned at him. “Feeling somewhat diminished, Daniel?”

He gave a wry laugh. “Guilty on two counts,” he agreed, conceding the argument to her.

She sat back, ridiculously pleased he had caught her point so quickly. Her eyes flirted with him. She was taking wicked pleasure in putting him on the spot. “I wouldn’t like a lover who didn’t make me feel uniquely special to him.”

Heart-tripping desire flashed out at her. “You are unique. Superficial likenesses are irrelevant to the person you are inside.”

She shook her head, trying to quell the treacherous response he evoked as she rebutted his opinion. “They’re not really irrelevant, you know. In some ways they shape the inner person.” Her mouth twisted ruefully. “Who knows how I would have developed if I hadn’t been a twin?”

“The strength of mind and inner fire would still be there,” he said with certainty.

“Is that what you see?”

“More like feel. I’d no sooner laid eyes on you than it hit me like a sledgehammer. I’ve never experienced so much concentrated mental and emotional power. A totally annihilating blast. It made me wonder if you were telepathic.”

Had it made him suspicious?

Annabel silently fretted over what might have been a telling overreaction to him that night at the motel. She had been under intense pressure to keep alert and make all the right responses, leaving no crack in her credibility. When he had stepped into the room, she’d been wound up tight, having already fielded a host of questions from the motel people, the ambulance officers, the police. Someone had tipped off the media, as well, and reporters were baying for blood outside.

One look at Daniel Wolfe and all her instincts had screamed, “Danger, threat.” Her mind had leapt into overdrive, instantly dictating, “Fight, eliminate.” He hadn’t said a word, yet she’d repelled him with all the power she could harness because...because she’d felt his power and it had disturbed her, distracted her, and she couldn’t afford to be distracted or disturbed. Not until Izzie was safe.

“Are you?” he asked.

The question meant nothing to her. She was still deeply involved in analysing her reaction to him, trying to explain it away. No other man had ever affected her like that. On the other hand, she’d never been in such a nerve-racking, life-and-death situation before.

“You don’t want to answer?” he appealed.

“Pardon?”

“Are you telepathic? It’s said that twins sometimes are with each other.”

She sighed. “There you go again, thinking of me as a twin.”

“But not as a carbon copy, Annabel. I would never mistake you for your sister.”

Warm pleasure flooded through her as his eyes reinforced his insistence that she was unique to him. Then she remembered the photograph, and her heart seized up. If he had it, could he tell the difference? Most people couldn’t with photographs. Her heart kicked into life again. One man’s personal opinion didn’t count as hard evidence. He’d need more than that to prove it was Isabel who had been with Barry Wolfe when he died.

If that was his intent.

Maybe it was just curiosity to know the truth.

Or was that hope speaking?

The soup was served. Its arrival was very timely. Annabel didn’t like the confusion in her mind. She felt a very strong tug of attraction towards Daniel Wolfe. The idea of exploring where they might go together was getting more seductive by the minute. If only their connection had been simple and straightforward. But it was impossible to ignore the complications involved in his identity and hers. She had to stay on guard.

Her mind wandered over the problems as they silently consumed the soup. The truth had to be suppressed. It could hurt too many people. Even if Neil Mason forgave Izzie’s lapse into temptation, he wouldn’t forget it. His trust in her would be shaken, which would erode the supportive nature of their relationship. This would inevitably rebound on the children, and what had been a happy and secure household would start snapping with tensions.

Izzie wouldn’t be able to bear it. She needed approval. She needed someone strong to lean on. That was why she’d married Neil Mason, a man twelve years older and imbued with the confidence of having all the answers to everything, a man who was more than prepared to take charge of his innocent, malleable young wife and direct her along the lines he considered right and proper.

Had Izzie fallen into the marriage because she didn’t know what else to do? She had only been twenty. Was it because Annabel had struck out on her own, determined to pursue interests her twin didn’t share, tired of suppressing them for Izzie’s sake?

Annabel had never voiced these private doubts. Although Neil’s pompous righteousness always irritated her, it had felt wrong to criticise a choice when it seemed to fulfil Izzie’s needs. However, if she was ruthlessly honest with herself, it had been a relief to pass the responsibility of propping up her sister onto Neil. She had overlooked his faults, wanting Izzie to be happy with him.

But was she?

To go to a motel with Barry Wolfe.

How much guilt did she bear in all this for effecting a separation from her twin to claim a life of her own, knowing Izzie’s dependence on continual support?

My other half, Annabel thought with a sense of helplessness. No escape from it. They were two sides of the same coin, different, yet joined to each other in an unbreakable mould that made up the whole. What kind of fate arranged such things? Or was it simply an unfortunate trick of nature? Why, in the split that had taken place to form two of them, was it ordained that one be strong and the other weak?

Steel and putty. Daniel Wolfe’s succinct summing up slid into her mind. How had he seen it so quickly? On such brief acquaintance?

Annabel wished it wasn’t true. She was always conscious that the division could have gone the other way, with Izzie being the strong one. She knew she could not turn her back on any cry for help from her sister. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t Izzie’s fault that she couldn’t cope alone. It wasn’t really Annabel’s fault, either. It was just how it was.

“It must be a difficult relationship for you, being a twin.”

Annabel glanced up sharply, startled at how closely Daniel Wolfe’s remark echoed her thoughts. He had finished his soup and was sitting back, watching her. The. instant their eyes locked she knew he was satisfied he had guessed right. It gave her an eerie feeling. How had he perceived and understood what she had kept hidden from so many others, even her own family?

Her parents were so proud of their girls, Isabel’s marriage, Annabel’s career, never really seeing the downside of their duality. Her mother would still be parading them in the same clothes if she had her way, blindly unaware it had made them feel like show dolls, not real people at all.

She looked at her bowl of soup, her hand poised over it with the spoon, and realised she had been brooding over a plate she had emptied, bar a trickle of liquid and a sliver of onion. She couldn’t remember tasting what she had eaten.

Troubled at having somehow revealed her secret burden, she carefully set the spoon down and composed herself, deciding to take the initiative from Daniel Wolfe and carry out her own inquisition. His interest in her relationship with her sister was too touchy, better blocked.

When her eyes flicked up again, it was with a look of bland inquiry. “All relationships have their difficulties, don’t you think?” Then with barely a pause she attacked, needing to get under his skin. “How do you feel about the pattern of corruption in your half-brother’s finance ministry? Does it surprise you?”

His mouth twisted in distaste. “Not really. Barry always had his eye on the main chance.”

So he wasn’t blind to his half-brother’s real character. “Did you know about it before his death?”

“Not in any detailed sense. I had little doubt the rumours were true, but it wasn’t my job to look into them, and Barry would never have confessed the truth. He rarely let his left hand know what his right hand was doing. He was a master of manipulation.”

The honesty of his assessment surprised her. He was pulling no punches on his half-brother’s behalf. Was it possible she could be equally honest with him? Would he be satisfied simply to be told the truth? And let everything lie as it was?

She barely held back the urge to do so. To reach out and... But it was crazy to trust a virtual stranger. Even crazier to confide in any relative of Barry Wolfe’s. He might be feeding her lines to see if he hooked something incriminating.

Nevertheless, his comments on his half-brother’s character certainly made sense of why her sister had fallen for Barry Wolfe. Izzie was so impressionable she would have been an easy victim for a man who had the knack of discerning other people’s needs and weaknesses and had no conscience about playing on them. Annabel nursed a bitter resentment at the callous way her sister had been used.

“He abused trust,” she muttered, her eyes flashing her condemnation of such heartless behaviour.

“People whose trust has been abused at an early age tend not to hold much stock in it,” Daniel Wolfe answered her evenly. “Trust becomes a commodity to be used in their favour.”

“You would have defended him?”

“Everyone has the right to a defence, Annabel.”

“Despite how much they hurt others?”

“That’s the law. It’s always a mistake to rush to judgment. Some people are flawed through no fault of their own. They, too, were once innocent before their circumstances in life twisted them into other paths,” he added quietly.

“That doesn’t give them the right to do as they please.”

“No, it doesn’t. Which is why we have prisons.”

But his sympathies lay with his half-brother. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like his legal argument, either, however reasonable it was. There were plenty of people these days who survived their parents’ divorces without turning into criminals who took from others when it suited them. To her mind, Barry Wolfe was a crook and a cad.

Daniel Wolfe probably didn’t want to hear that. Truth was sometimes very unpalatable. He might try to prove something else. His sense of truth and justice might demand that Izzie pay for falling into the Barry trap, regardless of the circumstances or consequences.

The waiter removed their soup plates.

Annabel picked up her pina colada again. Beyond the lit area around the pool, nightfall was turning the trees into dark silhouettes. She listened for the sound of the surf breaking on the beach, wishing she could recapture the sense of peace she’d felt earlier. It was gone. As was freedom. Daniel Wolfe had to be dealt with, one way or another.

“You’re angry,” he observed.

She gave him a derisive look. “You revive what I came here to forget for a while. That doesn’t exactly please me.”

He held her gaze with piercing intensity as he remarked, “One never really escapes from an uneasy conscience.”

Annabel laughed, determined to throw him off that line. “My conscience is absolutely clear.”

The laser eyes kept boring into her. “Were you personally involved with Barry, Annabel?”

She felt her face hardening and knew her eyes blazed with contempt. “Are you asking me if he was my lover?”

His mouth twisted. “Hormones are not necessarily attached to the brain. Many women found Barry irresistible.”

“I found him eminently resistible.” She bit out the words emphatically.

“Yet you did meet him at the motel.”

“As you so properly pointed out earlier, everyone has the right to a defence.” And she would defend Izzie to her last breath. “I was about to kill his career in the public service,” she explained for the umpteenth time. “In the interests of fairness, I would grant even a man I despised one last hearing.”

“Despise is a strong word.”

“You wanted truth. That’s it. Like it or lump it, Daniel,” she fiercely challenged.

“Such strength of feeling usually denotes that one has been personally hurt. Or—” he paused before adding softly “—someone dear to you has been hurt.”

Danger!

Annabel forced herself to calm down, back off. She smiled. Coldly. “Put it down to the passion of a crusader. Barry Wolfe hurt a lot of people. I found his likability offensive. It was a mask of deceit.”

“So you weren’t ever taken in by him on a personal level?”

She waved dismissively. “He had a reputation as a womaniser. Such men have no appeal to me, however superficially charming they are.”

“Then you were armoured against him from the start.”

“Armour suggests I might have been vulnerable.”

“I’ve never known Barry to not get a woman he went after.”

“That’s a sweeping statement. Perhaps he only went after those who showed they were interested.”

“And you weren’t.”

“Not in a million years,” she asserted with lofty disdain. “And he knew it. Which was why—” She stopped, appalled at almost tripping into a pitfall.

“Why what?” he prompted.

Why he tried to get at me in other ways. “He didn’t like me,” she finished with a careless shrug.

“And why he would have enjoyed flirting with your sister, who did like him.”

“Did she?” Annabel raised sceptical eyebrows. “Or was she merely returning charm for charm in the superficial way a political wife does at such functions?”

“You would know best,” he conceded, but the cynical glint in his eyes telegraphed blatant disbelief in Isabel’s innocence.

Annabel felt compelled to cast doubt on his sureness. “You seem biased towards the view that women in general fell like ninepins to the inviting twinkle in Barry Wolfe’s baby blue eyes. Did he seduce your women away from you?”

“A few times. It was a game to him. And a useful barometer to me.”

“You mean you used him as a test of their interest in you?” The cold-bloodedness of it shocked her.

He laughed. “Hardly that. Barry was older, more sophisticated, more knowing in the ways of women and the world. A flashy sports car, flowers, flattery, fancy places and fun usually won the day. I could have followed his education in this area if I’d wanted to compete with him, but I wanted something different.”

“So he didn’t take anyone who really mattered to you,” she remarked, secretly glad he wasn’t seduced by the superficial.

His thick black lashes swept down, and there was a stillness on his face that gave him a shuttered look. “There was one who mattered,” he said quietly.

“What did you do?” she asked, aware she was treading on a sensitive area yet too curious about his reaction—the character of the man—to let it pass.

His smile was chillingly dismissive. “Nothing.”

Annabel couldn’t believe it. “You just let her go to Barry, knowing him for the philanderer he was?”

He shrugged. “The choice was hers.”

“You didn’t put up a fight to keep her?”

His eyes flashed with steely pride. “I want a woman who knows her own mind, Annabel. I want a woman who wants me. Exclusively. I’m grateful to Barry for teaching me that.”

Grateful! She shook her head. The hurt behind the lesson must have been dreadful. However much Daniel Wolfe rationalised what his half-brother had done to him, the cruel competitiveness of the game had surely frozen his heart. No wonder he’d perfected icy control, holding back until he could be certain there was to be no shift of interest.

“Is this why you haven’t married?” she asked softly.

“Tell me why you haven’t,” he countered.

“It never felt right for me.”

He nodded, emanating a satisfaction that she could feel curling around her. Her stomach clenched as she comprehended what it meant. She’d passed the test of being immune to Barry Wolfe’s attractions. He wanted her. Exclusively. He wanted her to want him exclusively.

However much the idea might appeal, it was impossible.

She was a twin.